The Rome Affair

by Karen Swan

  She looked back at Cantarelli, baffled.

  To her surprise he was smiling – and pointing to the ceiling. She looked up and was amazed to see a small round hole cut into the rock, with iron bars inset on both sides. ‘You are kidding me,’ she whispered. The rough floor and permeating darkness meant there wasn’t much scope for looking up. If she hadn’t known to stop here, she would have walked straight past it.

  Cantarelli laughed at her expression and she looked at him in even more surprise. She hadn’t even imagined that he could smile, much less laugh, and it made him look completely different. ‘You want to see?’

  ‘I want to know how you thought the Viscontessa was going to get up here . . .’ she quipped, stepping into the cavity and peering up.

  ‘We have a mirror. A periscope. But, if you want, you can go over and see for yourself.’

  ‘No! How would I . . . ? I mean . . . I couldn’t possibly get up there.’

  Cantarelli laced his fingers together. ‘You do a leg up, grab the bars and push yourself up.’

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘Yes. I push you.’ He lowered his laced fingers and waited for her to step into them.

  ‘But then how will you get up?’

  He looked perplexed by the question. ‘I will pull myself up. How else? Now come.’

  Cesca stepped onto his hands, feeling wobbly as she reached for the bars, her head and shoulders going straight into the hole. But it was surprisingly easy to grab them and heave herself up and into the low tunnel that led off to the left. She was grateful that her skirt was long.

  ‘Now on your stomach, wriggle.’ Cantarelli’s voice followed her, sounding echoey. ‘When you see the drop hole, try to turn so you get your legs down first.’

  Cesca didn’t particularly like the sound of that – he hadn’t seen her three-point turns – but the space was surprisingly capacious for manoeuvring and a few moments later she dropped down on the other side.

  She was still gasping when Cantarelli followed seconds after.

  ‘Incredible, no?’ he asked, walking into the vast space, arms outstretched. It was almost double the width of the previous tunnel, a foot higher at least and built from the thin red bricks that characterized so many of the early Roman buildings. Further down, maybe twenty metres, the tunnel split four ways. ‘My whole career I wait for moments like this.’

  Cesca turned on the spot, hardly able to believe how her day had changed. Twenty minutes earlier, she’d been sipping jasmine tea and listening to an heiress reminisce about the break-up of her second marriage – exactly how many were there? she was beginning to wonder – and now here she was in an ancient and almost immaculate underground tunnel.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Cesca gasped. ‘How old do you think this is?’

  ‘We think this dates from Hadrian’s era – so, nearly two thousand years old.’

  Cesca paused. ‘But that’s significantly older than the palazzo.’ By her own estimate – from what she knew from tour guiding – the building was fourteenth-century at the very earliest.

  ‘Yes. This would have been built for the dwelling that previously occupied the site.’

  ‘And the tunnel we were just in? Is that newer?’

  ‘It looks like that one was built at the same time as the palace. We think when the palace was built they must either have destroyed the rest of this tunnel to allow for the east-west tunnel, or it was already ruined and they just built in front of it.’

  Cesca thought about the cobbles of this tunnel poking into the other one. It couldn’t have been that destroyed if it butted right up to the palace’s planned service tunnel. ‘Isn’t it odd that when they built the wall for that service tunnel, they kept the access by putting in the roof tunnel? Surely they could have incorporated the two, as was done further down?’ she asked, pointing to the four split-away tunnels. ‘Why block it off and yet still retain an access point?’

  Cantarelli shrugged. ‘Possibly those tunnels would have compromised the security of the palace. The Damiani art collection is priceless. By making the tunnel look blocked up, anyone stumbling down here would see there was no way through and turn back.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Cesca murmured, beginning to walk. ‘Have you gone down these yet? Do you know where they lead?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said, catching her by the elbow and keeping her from going any further. ‘And we will need to scan and map them first before we proceed. It is important to make sure they are safe.’

  ‘They look safe.’

  ‘You don’t know that. Thousands of years of building, flooding, traffic could have weakened the structure so that one sneeze could make it all come toppling down.’

  Cesca took a step back, chastened. When he put it like that . . . ‘So how do you check they’re safe, then?’

  ‘We have wire-controlled robots equipped with cameras and imaging scanners.’

  Cesca looked at him, impressed. And to think all this time she’d thought they’d been just pointlessly ‘digging around’. ‘It’s incredible down here. I love it.’

  Cantarelli smiled again. ‘Yes. Often it is only these underground networks that can tell us how our ancestors lived. When the Empire disintegrated, all the greatest villas fell into disrepair or were plundered for their stone, whereas these networks were left intact. The more complex the network of tunnels underground, the grander the villa was above ground, keeping the slaves out of sight whilst they serviced the estate, moving firewood or food to where it was needed. At Caracalla, the tunnels were five storeys deep.’

  ‘My God.’ She nodded wonderingly, thinking now how glad she was to swap her wig for a hard hat. Then she narrowed her eyes suddenly. ‘Wait a minute, does any of this have anything to do with that little tile you risked your neck for?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Yes or no?’

  Cantarelli stared at her for a long moment.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, if you don’t tell me, Elena will,’ she said exasperatedly. ‘She’s telling me everything, you know. I’m her biographer. I don’t get what’s so precious about one little tile.’

  ‘Very well. But over pizza.’

  If he had started tap-dancing, she couldn’t have looked more stunned. ‘Pizza?’

  ‘You don’t eat pizza?’

  ‘Of course I eat pizza. Everyone eats pizza.’

  ‘Not if they have gluten intolerance.’

  ‘Oh, so what are you saying? That I’m pasty?’

  He watched her solemnly, but amusement flickered in those dark eyes. ‘You are argumentative.’

  ‘You can talk.’

  He sighed. ‘Is that a yes?’

  Cesca opened her mouth – and then closed it again. ‘Well, of course. I’m hungry and I’m curious.’

  ‘About the tile?’

  ‘About the tile.’

  Chapter Twenty

  New York, May 1978

  The drawer came off the runners and fell to the floor with a heavy thump, narrowly missing her bare foot. ‘Goddammit!’ Laney hissed as clothes disgorged frothily on the carpet, joining the other cast-offs she had pulled out and discarded as she ran from room to room, stuffing the bags with whatever essentials they’d need until they were properly set up.

  She had dispatched Matilda, their nanny, to collect little Stevie from kindergarten. Steve may have been in LA but she didn’t underestimate him. He had sworn he’d never let her have their son and she believed him. His cold words were still scaldingly hot in her ear. Her long-withheld grenade of divorce, finally lobbed following this morning’s latest headline about the baby, had exploded in her own face as he’d viciously turned the tables and confronted her with an image of herself which she didn’t share – and yet could recognize. The party girl in the clubs every night and the It Girl in the papers every morning, she was no more than a rich addict, a society whore, an unfit mother, he’d hissed. No matter that it was all his doing – his idea, his plan; he was the one who had plied h
er with champagne and charlie to make her ‘lively’ when they went out, prescription drugs to keep her ‘docile’ when they stayed in. But the courts would never hear that because the papers didn’t report it; it didn’t make for good copy. Instead, her shame was all there, just like the old joke went: in black and white and read all over.

  He had bent her to his will in front of everyone, in front of herself. The man was an actor, after all, a master manipulator, controlling her with drugs, destroying her public image and corroding her self-esteem. He was right – what judge would ever let her keep their son? She had put on a show and America had been watching. Stanley Charles could only do so much.

  The pilot of their private jet had been informed and was already logging their flight path, the plane fuelled and ready to go. She ran to the safe and retrieved their passports, turning on the spot in her panic, trying to think what else she would need. It was usually Fatima who did the packing but there was no time today to call on her for help.

  Her eyes fell to the newspaper, open on page six on the bed. Oh, how she longed for bed – to sleep, to escape this waking nightmare. The sheets were still warm from her exhausted body, but she hadn’t rested properly in years. Food, drink, sleep: none of it nourished her.

  She paused for a moment, trying to push past the panic, trying to see through his propaganda. He was making her hysterical again – he was so good at it, even from the other side of the country – but wait: what was that unborn baby going to mean for his reputation? His career had only got to where it was because of the profile he’d assumed from marrying her. He’d been careful with his countless affairs, only ever sleeping within their set – with her so-called friends, who would never dream of spilling the beans publicly, or with model types whose words counted for nothing.

  But Steve had slipped up: that baby changed everything. What had merely been rumour before was now going to be substantiated in flesh and blood. Yet he was dragging her down with him. Their pretence of happy families was going to be exposed as the sham it really was. No amount of glossy ‘At Home’ features in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar and Cosmopolitan were going to outshout a bawling baby.

  She sank onto the bed, as further down the apartment she heard the elevator bell sound. It would be the porter, coming up to bring the bags down to the waiting car. Matilda was under instruction to wait with little Stevie down there; she hadn’t wanted him coming up to this scene of devastation, nor had she wanted to lose a second as they made their escape.

  She straightened her back and took a deep breath, trying to push her mind back into her body. Calm descended. First things first, she needed to call Charles. Perhaps she had more cause to hope than Steve had led her to believe. Maybe he was just playing her with his threats, exactly the way he had played her throughout their entire marriage. Divorce was different now, she knew. The Governor of California, Reagan, had brought in new laws. ‘No fault’ divorces, someone had told her; you didn’t have to prove anything, they’d said, instead, you could cite ‘irreconcilable differences’ or ‘irretrievable breakdown’ . . . It all boiled down to the same thing: this marriage could be torn up as easily as cigarette paper.

  She left the bedroom and headed down the hall – only to find three uniformed police officers walking towards her. Fatima was running after them, looking harried and upset, but Laney could see the sheet of paper in the sergeant’s hand that prevented her maid from stopping them.

  ‘Mrs Easton?’ he asked, knowing full well who she was.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked, terror bolting through her.

  ‘Sergeant Delaney of the Narcotics Division, Nineteenth Precinct, NYPD.’ He held up the sheet of paper. ‘We have a warrant to search these premises on suspicion of possession of Class A drugs.’

  ‘What?’ she cried. ‘But that is preposterous! How dare you! What on earth makes you think—’

  ‘I take it the bedrooms are this way?’ the sergeant asked, pointing in the direction from which she had just come.

  ‘Yes, but—’

  He nodded his head to the two other police officers, who split off and disappeared into the flanking rooms. ‘Excuse me, please,’ the sergeant said, moving past her. He looked in at the two guest bedrooms – immaculate, untouched – pausing longer at the scene of chaos in the master suite. He looked back at her, an eyebrow arched as though the very scene confirmed her guilt. ‘Going somewhere, Mrs Easton?’

  Laney straightened up, determined not to show her fear. ‘Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?’

  He didn’t bother to reply – not yet. He wanted the proof he had come for. He merely turned away from her and walked down the rest of the corridor, to where little Stevie’s room was located.

  ‘Wait! Why are you going in there?’ she called after him, breaking into a run as he disappeared inside. It was almost as though he’d been looking for that room specifically. ‘Sergeant!’

  He wasn’t in the bedroom, but in the en suite. The bathroom light was on and she burst into the room to find the policeman crouched down beside the vanity unit, one arm reaching up into the cabinet. He had headed straight for it.

  ‘You can’t do this! This is my son’s bathroom!’ she cried, feeling hysteria begin to grip her, blanching her skin, pinching her heart. ‘How could you possibly think—?’

  The words died in her throat as the sergeant retracted his arm and held out a small Elizabeth Arden make-up bag she had mislaid a few weeks earlier. The masking tape hung floppy from where it had detached from the sink unit. She already knew exactly what they would find inside.

  They hadn’t needed to think, to search: they knew. To have produced this warrant this early, to have got here this fast . . . Nothing Steve ever did was accidental. He hadn’t slipped up at all. He had known that headline was coming out. He wasn’t the one who’d been caught unawares, and it was all going to play out exactly as he’d said it would. Party girl. Addict.

  Unfit mother.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Rome, July 2017

  ‘Hey, Cesca!’ Silvano cried happily as they wandered in. ‘Why we no see you for so long?’

  ‘I’ve been working. Hard,’ she grinned, leaning on the counter as his brother, Luciano, tossed the dough behind him. ‘Hey, Luciano.’

  ‘Hey, bella!’ Luciano smiled, throwing the dough with a little more flourish, just for her.

  ‘You are hungry, yes?’ Silvano asked, expertly spreading the passata on the dough base stretched out before him.

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, salsiccia e friarielli,’ he said, already sprinkling fresh fennel, basil and red chilli over sausage slices and broccoli florets.

  ‘You know me too well,’ she laughed. She was nothing if not a creature of habit. ‘What would you like, Signor Cantarelli?’ she asked lightly, glancing over to find him looking displeased by the encounter, his customary frown back on his face.

  ‘Ciao, Silvano,’ he muttered. ‘Margherita con bufala.’

  ‘Ciao. I did not know you two are friends,’ Silvano said to them with a sly wink, an openly curious expression on his face as he dipped into the tubs of pre-prepared toppings and decorated the pizzas with an artisanal touch. He looked at Cantarelli. ‘How did you catch the most beautiful Renaissance woman in Rome?’

  ‘We’re not friends,’ he said.

  ‘Well, we’re not not friends . . .’ Cesca stammered, embarrassed as she looked from Cantarelli back to Silvano again. ‘We’re . . . sort of colleagues, I gue—’

  ‘We work in the same building,’ Cantarelli said decisively. ‘That is all.’

  ‘Okay,’ Silvano said, looking sorry he’d asked, using his enormous paddle to hoist the pizzas into the wood-fired oven.

  An awkward silence bloomed; Cesca looked away, feeling hurt by his comment. Why had Cantarelli even asked her for lunch if he was only going to be hostile and rude? This was a bad idea. The momentary brightness between them as they’d shared the excitement and awe of the subterranean discov
ery had quickly dissipated when they’d returned above ground, the sunlight somehow shattering his good mood as he listened to her tell Elena about the tunnels. He had cut in, when Elena had failed to look moved by the find, stressing their potentially immense archaeological significance – but it was clear the Viscontessa simply wanted her garden back. What did she care about underground tunnels when her parterre was in bits? Cesca supposed things hadn’t been improved either by some of the men on Cantarelli’s team teasing them as they left to get these pizzas, wolf-whistling and making silly sounds to their backs. If they thought there was anything romantic in the lunch offer, they couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Silvano propped the paddle against the rough wall and turned back to them, his hands bunched in fists on his waist. ‘So, did you go to the match last night?’ he asked brightly.

  As the two men lapsed into sport talk, Cesca looked back out into the little square. She watched Signora Accardo, opposite in the osteria, taking a carafe and glasses over to a table. Signora Dutti, on her way to Campo de’ Fiori to buy her herbs and pasta (if Cesca was predictable when it came to pizza, Signora Dutti was as reliable as the talking clock when it came to her shopping habits), stopped to talk to her over the low jasmine hedge that delineated the osteria’s outdoor area, the rattan sun shade beginning to play its part as the midday shadow pulled back over the square like a sheet and the cobbles began to bake in the sun.

  The two of them often put their chairs together and sat side by side in the slow hours, when the restaurant was closed and Signora Dutti had completed her chores, their chatter non-stop. Tourists always walked past without seeing them, their eyes fixed on the side end of the grand palazzo or the pretty window boxes of the houses; peering in, too, at the windows of the bakery – before inevitably going in and purchasing several paper bags of bomboloni and cannoli. But Cesca had always noticed the two women; it was people who interested her, not buildings, and she thought it must be lovely to get to live somewhere where friendships were lifelong and an entire community could be confined to a tiny square.